Dr. Spouge was one of two presenters (along only with Damon Little of the New York Botanical Garden) to a subset of the Plant Working Group invited to the Edinburgh Conference "Selecting Barcode Loci for Plants" specifically to analyze standardized data, to select a plant barcode. The other conference participants sequenced seven candidate barcode loci across a broad range of land plants. Drs. Little and Spouge analyzed the resulting data, so the conference participants could select loci to constitute a plant barcode. The Edinburgh Conference selected rbcL and matK as the two plant barcode loci. Dr. Spouge performed a similar data analysis for the Fungal Barcode Working Group in Amsterdam (2011) and offered similar services to the Protist Barcode Working Group in Berlin (2011)